Kinesiology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2784
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Protection for whom? A critical examination into the governance of women athletes through policies(2022) Posbergh, Anna; Jette, Shannon L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Women’s sport remains a contested realm that frequently features standards and regulations implying women are “lesser than,” “different from,” or “derivative of” men (Cahn, 2015, p. 222). As such, a range of protective policies have been introduced as techniques to ensure the safety and health of women, defend “fair competition” in women’s sport, and/or prevent women from violating social and medical boundaries that identify them as women. However, because protective policies rely on divergent rationales in their creation and justification, they elicit different impacts for individuals who are categorized (or wish to be categorized) as women. Previous scholarship has analyzed the underlying issues of science, race, gender, and nationality in individual protective policies and indicated the potential for specific policies (i.e., female eligibility policies) to elicit dangerous health, social, and mental consequences on black and brown women from the Global South. However, there a paucity of research that investigates protective policies as a broad category to understand their similarities, differences, and nuances. To fill this gap, I examine multiple protective policies to conduct a critical, qualitative inquiry into how protective policies are created in elite women’s sports. I focus on how such policies regulate women’s bodies and how different versions of “woman” are constructed by interpreting and selectively drawing from myriad forms of evidence to determine who is protected (and who is excluded), how “protection” is understood, what evidence is mobilized, and how protective policy consequences are justified.I investigate three policies as case studies: the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) 2014 consensus statement on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S), World Athletics’ 2019 policy on female eligibility, and World Athletics’ 2019 policy on transgender eligibility. These three policies are selected for analysis because they reflect the range of science-supported protective policies. While all seek to protect women, each adopts a different stance on the importance of sex differences, in the process demonstrating the social construction of “sex” and malleability of scientific evidence. Guided by feminist, critical race, and Foucauldian-inspired governmentality studies approaches, I center the relevant discourses, knowledges, and power relations within policy rationales to better understand how protective policies regulate (women’s) bodies and maintain social norms. Each case study analysis consists of two data sets: the actual policy texts and nine semi-structured interviews with policy authors, scientists, and other relevant administrators involved in the creation, drafting, and implementation of the three policies. I analyze the data through thematic analysis followed by Foucauldian discourse analysis, informed by a governmentality studies perspective. Using this two-step analytic framework, I first determine what was said in document texts and by participants, followed by a deeper level of analysis and contextualization of how dominant discourses, knowledges, and power relations were created and mobilized to protect (some) women athletes. My findings are organized into four empirical chapters. In the first empirical chapter, I examine the document texts to provide a broad examination into the contexts surrounding their creation, as well as the unproblematized logics that inform their dominant discourses, ways of knowing, and power hierarchies. Based on my analysis, I bring to light the implications of the logics underpinning the documents, including the use of elite medical discourses, the construction of “suspicious” athletes, biologizations of race and gender, and individual diagnoses that lack attention to broader social, political, and cultural dimensions. In the second empirical chapter, I focus on the interviews, or “expert knowledge,” with those involved with researching, drafting, and implementing the three case studies to understand how they draw from (certain) forms of evidence, interpret and/or circulate dominant discourses and knowledges, and navigate the (often) contentious process of creating protective policies (see Wells, 2020). In the third and fourth empirical chapters, I examine both sets of data (policy and interview). In the first of these two empirical chapters, I provide an overview of the “start-to-finish” process behind creating and implementing protective policies and investigate the “tensions” that emerge at each step in the process: from explaining why protective policies exist, to finding or constructing appropriate forms of evidence, to determining the necessity of a separate women’s category, to methods of governing. In the latter empirical chapter, I more closely parse through these “tensions” behind and within the rationales and strategies of protective policies to reveal the complexity reality of such documents, particularly with consideration to (protected) participation, (controlled) unfairness, and (felt) policy implementation. This dissertation is significant as it elucidates how, if, and when women’s rights and bodies are protected through policies. As sport shapes and is shaped by society, this research illuminates on a societal scale how science and policy shape dominant ways of knowing, particularly regarding gender, sex, race, and human rights. Especially in a time when legal protections of women’s autonomy, bodies, and rights are in question, this project provides insight into how protective policies enact a range of measures to safeguard (some) women’s bodies through regulation, discipline, or even exclusion. By investigating how sociocultural and scientific knowledges intersect to determine who qualifies as “woman,” who is considered in need of “protection,” and how protection is implemented, the findings from this dissertation will hopefully inform organizational and administrative efforts to create more equitable, compassionate, and inclusive policies, both in sport and society.Item EXERCISE IS MEDICINE? A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE PROMOTION OF EXERCISE FOR MENTAL HEALTHCARE(2018) Maier, Julie; Jette, Shannon L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Increasingly, physical activity is being promoted as a way to prevent or treat a range of chronic health conditions, including mental illness. In this dissertation, I utilize an ecological framework and draw upon feminist theories to explore why it is that physical activity is being used as a form of (mental health) therapy in this current moment, as well as the benefits and shortcomings of physical activity in preventing or treating mental illness. In particular, I focus on the ways in which gendered discourses and norms shape the physical activity experiences of women with mental illness. The project entails three separate, yet related, phases: 1) Extensive review of popular and academic literature to contextualize the “exercise is medicine” movement; 2) Assessment of the American College of Sports Medicine and American Medical Association’s “Exercise is Medicine” initiative; and 3) In-depth qualitative interviews with women with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The results of my three empirical examinations suggest that physical activity can be a beneficial form of mental health treatment, or a valued part of one’s life and identity more generally. However, too often the limits to physical activity’s effectiveness in treating particular mental illnesses is downplayed, as is attention to the potential harms that can come from being physically active. At times, exercise is even positioned as a “cure”, or superior to psychopharmaceuticals in treating mental illnesses, such as depression. Such enthusiasm toward exercise’s potential therapeutic value can be seen to be, in part, the result of the current neoliberal, healthist moment in which individual responsibility, hard work, and natural remedies are valued over that which is considered easy, quick, or synthetic (Crawford, 1980, Lupton, 1995, Fullagar, 2017). This is not to suggest that physical activity cannot play a vital role in helping people with mental illness, but better messages and more resources are needed to make it accessible, safe, and meaningful to this population. I conclude the dissertation by providing suggestions as to how this can be accomplished.